You'll Always Know Where To Find Me
by FarenMaddox
Summary: After the events at the end of Never Let Me Go, Yuui is finding it hard to separate what he wants from what he thinks he should want. But what he wants will always be waiting for him. Always.
1. there are no happy endings

there are no happy endings

"Yuui, where is your suit?" Ashura asked, sounding exasperated. "Chii-san offered to take it to the dry cleaners, remember?"

I turned away from his window and blinked a few times as I made my brain catch up with Ashura's question. I felt out of it, just then. I definitely knew that Chii-san had been around this past week to help Ashura with some spring cleaning because Ashura was busy with something. She didn't work at the house on a regular basis anymore, since there was only the three of us. What was this about a suit? I felt ashamed.

Ashura frowned at me, making the squirm in my belly even worse, then he sighed and walked over to put a hand on my forehead. "Are you sick? You're acting strangely. I've asked you about that suit three times now."

"For my graduation ceremony," I suddenly recalled. Yes, he had mentioned it. "I have it. It's in the closet."

"Can you get it _out_ of the closet, and give it to Chii-san, please?" he asked, but he didn't remove his hand. "You do feel a little cold."

"I'm fine, Ashura," I said with a smile. "It is a little chilly today."

Ashura's frown didn't look angry, just troubled. He made the guilt worse without even trying. His hand moved down to cup my cheek, which I didn't mind much. "I'm worried about you. Have you even opened the test results yet?"

I had applied and tested for a university in another town. I would have liked to remain closer, with my family, but I couldn't help the feeling recently that I wanted to be out of this house. It seemed like I spent all my time at my bedroom window, daydreaming, my eyes looking in the direction of Sonomi-san's house. A few times, I'd carried a book out to the field where Kurogane and I used to practice and sat under that tree all day, sometimes reading and sometimes just remembering. I kept hoping that Syaoran wouldn't want me to take him swimming this summer. I didn't know if I could stand the ghosts of three childish voices echoing together on the banks of the creek.

It was beginning to be obvious that I really needed to spend some time away from here. Which meant I needed to be sure I got into that university. It was getting bad if Ashura was worried.

"I was waiting until you had time to see them with me," I lied. I wasn't sure what the truth was. The whole feeling of not knowing, of not having things decided . . . had felt good. I'd been savoring it, a little.

Ashura moved away, and sat down on the bed. He had a softer look on his face now, and he patted the space beside him. "Sit. Yuui . . . do you want to talk? I feel like I know what this is about, but I need you to talk to me."

I didn't really want to talk about it. Ashura had been leaving me alone these past few months, and I was too comfortable with not talking about it. "It" being Kurogane, which Ashura obviously knew.

It had felt like a mistake almost the moment Kurogane disappeared. A little coil of regret snarled up in the pit of my belly the moment Ashura turned away from sending him away, and there it lodged as a permanent fixture. I didn't know how to begin to say so, or if I should. I — We had made so many plans for how the next few years were going to be. It would be such a waste . . .

The past few months had felt empty.

I tested it out on my tongue. "It's not the same."

Ashura was patient beside me. It was like he already knew what I was going to say.

"Without him," I added, as if either of us needed the clarification. I'd stopped crying just before Kurogane left, and I hadn't cried since. It all came rushing up into my throat to choke me when Ashura put his arm around me. "Ashura—"

"You're all right," he said quietly, and let me lean into him.

"I don't know what I'm doing," I confessed. "I can't stay here without driving myself crazy, but if I leave then what was the point of staying behind?"

Ashura had stopped answering questions like that. I guess he wanted me to think them through on my own now.

"I'm not ready to be, you know, whatever it is that I need to be there," I said.

It was true. Maybe it wasn't true until I said it. The idea of joining Kurogane in his world, of being beside him as he rebuilt a province and a people . . . it still made my heart pound in the middle of the night, when I'd roll over half-asleep and miss the way his skin felt. It made me feel tiny and sick to my stomach. I didn't know what made him so much more ready than I—maybe he'd just always been more self-reliant or maybe it was the way he never leaned on Sonomi-san or Tomoyo the way I had leaned on my family. Maybe the real reason was just that he didn't have as much of a choice as I did about going to Nihon. No matter what the reason, he seemed to have made the last jump into adulthood without me.

Which wasn't his fault, and therefore I wasn't angry with him. At all. Not a bit.

"Then let's look at those test scores, shall we?" Ashura said, getting up and going to the desk to pick up the envelope. "You might not have gotten in, after all."

His eyes were twinkling, because my dad is a jerk and his favourite time to make fun of me is when I want to be coddled.

Of course I got in, and who needed to see the test scores to know that? I'm a genius.


	2. endings are the saddest part

endings are the saddest part

"Yuui," Syaoran said firmly from his place in my doorway. "You can't study the whole summer."

I was practically asleep on top of my books, the afternoon sunlight slanting over my shoulders and making me drowse with my chin cupped in my hand. I still wasn't sleeping well. Sleeping alone was difficult to begin with, and now I spent my nights torturing myself with worry about what university was going to be like. A new school and no Kurogane at my back, was all I could think. The fact that I was nearly eighteen this time wasn't making much of an impression, at least not in the middle of the night when all the worry struck.

I turned heavy eyes to him. "Says who?" I murmured, smiling in spite of myself.

"Says me," he said impatiently, and came in to tug ineffectually at my arm. "Yuui, come on, I want to make brownies and I'm not allowed in the kitchen by myself yet. At least read down there."

"Brownies?" I said, my mouth spreading even wider, chasing the drowsiness away in slow stages.

Syaoran did that thing he was starting to do, where he made his shoulders straighter and his jaw more firm. It was the cutest thing, seriously.

"We all like brownies and I like cooking," he said in this cool voice. I had to resist the urge to just pick him up and squeeze him and remind him that I tied his shoes for him not that long ago. I was trying to do this Ashura's way. Ashura always took us seriously, even when he had to have been using magic to keep himself from laughing.

"Are some of these brownies for Miss Kinomoto?"

This kid had a full-body blush. It wasn't just his face, or even just his ears. It was his whole neck, too. "I might take some to Sakura-chan and Tomoyo-chan," he said all haughty, and stormed out of the room without waiting for me.

It made me so happy, though. Knowing that he was protected here, and she was, and everything would be okay for the two of them. Just like things would, eventually, be okay for me and Kurogane.

Tomoyo had been feeding me messages. Kurogane wasn't at court, he was at home in Suwa, and so he wasn't able to set up a portal with the Empress and Ashura to talk in person. But he sent progress reports every few weeks, and the princess would be sure to gather the relevant information to pass on to our Tomoyo for me.

He was safe. I would have been happy with just that, if I had to be. But I was privy to possibly more details about dealings in Suwa than other people in Nihon. Progress was a bit slow. There were no wards up because there was no standing homes where they could invite a priestess to live, but he had a company of men to hunt demons and after twenty one kills, the oni were beginning to be wary of Suwa. It was too late in the year by then for planting crops, and so no one was moving back into the territory yet. But Kurogane would be overseeing a team throughout the summer and autumn to clear rubble and sort out salvageable building materials. He'd winter in Shirasagi and then return in the spring with as many people as he could gather to begin building and farming. They'd choose a priestess at that time to accompany them.

It seemed likely that it would be Akane, I thought morosely. She'd already been planning on it, after all. And despite knowing better, despite absolutely knowing beyond all doubt that it wouldn't happen . . . Well. Kurogane had already kissed one version of the girl.

But of course that wasn't going to happen, and so I wasn't worrying about that. No, I was worrying about my studies here and how I would settle into a tiny student apartment in a new city away from my brother and father.

"Yuui?"

I came back to myself to realize I was just standing in the kitchen doorway, and had been for some time. Syaoran had already gotten most of his ingredients out.

He looked worried. Ugh. I was trying so hard to keep these things to myself, because that was the last thing I wanted Syaoran to be doing.

"Well, go on, impress me," I said immediately, to tease him and try to smooth it over.

He just went on giving me that pinched-forehead look, though.

"Can we go to the movies later?" he asked quietly.

"The movies?" I wasn't expecting that.

"We should— we should do things before you leave." He turned his eyes away to start measuring things out into a mixing bowl.

I crossed the kitchen and put an arm over his shoulders while he worked. "You're right, we should." He wasn't saying he wanted me out of the house and out of my own head, so I wasn't hearing it. Besides, maybe that really was just my projection. It could be simply that he did want to spend time with me before I left for school.

"I'll miss you so much," I said, my hand in his hair.

He hunched his shoulders. "Me, too," he muttered. "It's. Gonna be really quiet."

I didn't like thinking about Ashura and Syaoran by themselves in this big house. Especially as Syaoran started doing more at school and with his friends. I really, really didn't like thinking about Ashura being alone.

"I'm going to call you all the time, though," I said confidently. Because it was true, much as I knew how often the promise of university students calling home fell through. Family meant something a bit more to us, and we went a little further to protect it.

"I know. It's just not gonna be the same."


	3. so just give me a happy middle

so just give me a happy middle

Ashura came up the stairs while I was packing up the last of my clothes. He was grinning like a kid with a pile of birthday presents. Because I have a lot of dignity, I was not at all hurt to see him smiling like that while I was snapping a suitcase shut in preparation to leave for my university the next day.

"Well, I can't say it's the best timing I could have asked for . . ." he said.

I straightened up in a hurry. "What do you mean? What's going on?"

It's not that I hate change. I just can only take so much of it all at once.

Ashura ought to have been anxious about his next words, but he was too pleased at that moment to be anxious in the least. "We have a new boy."

"What?" was about all I could say.

"Come downstairs. His guardian is dropping him off just now."

"Ashura—" I caught his arm before he could turn around. "_What_?"

He let the smile slip a bit so I could see that he was, somewhere underneath it all, taking things seriously. "This is going to be interesting, to say the least," he admitted to me. "He's a spirit child."

"Well, that's new," I blurted out. The only thing I could think after that was that I really ought to somehow practice sounding more eloquent and less dumbfounded in moments of surprise.

"He's just finished explaining it all to me— the one who brought him here, I mean. He's quite intimidating. He's some kind of demon prince, I believe. He found this child dying on a riverbank, quite alone, and took him in, just a few months ago. But there's some . . . unrest, I think was how he put it, in the spirit world, of late. The boy fancies himself old enough to fight, if it comes to it. He's afraid the boy will get hurt. He'd heard of me, of us, somehow."

"So you just agreed to it in a heartbeat," I smirked. It wasn't as though there would be any doubt that Ashura would take in anyone who needed help. Wizard and vampire and universe-warping impossibility hadn't phased him in the least. Why not a spirit? "Um, where's Syaoran?"

Ashura nearly laughed at that. "They're not going to eat him, you know. He's downstairs attempting to get the new boy to speak."

"He doesn't speak?" I immediately thought of my own past, and wondered what had happened to him.

"I've been assured that he does. He doesn't seem to want to. He is . . . less than pleased to have been brought here."

"So you want me to come down and . . .?"

"Meet them, help the boy feel more at home. He's going to be part of the family now, after all."

There was nothing for it but to go down and make the best of it. Even while I was reeling with how sudden it was, I was feeling pretty happy about the whole thing. If not for such an interesting interruption, I probably would have spent the entire night staring at my ceiling. And it was an enormous, tangible relief to think that there would still be some life in the house. Ashura would have to teach this new boy how to control a human form, and all about this world. Keeping up with two boys would be just hard enough, I mused.

I tried to act like an adult, rather than clatter down in excitement like I might have a few years ago. I still wanted to, sure. But there was a spirit prince in the kitchen.

The spirit prince in question was holding our egg beater up in front of him, staring at it with a slightly irritated sort of fascination. There was a small pile of discarded other things on the kitchen counter beside him. He was dressed in a bunch of flowing things and he had possibly more hair than was strictly necessary, and he gave off an air of being far too important to be bothered with anybody else.

Except his face softened, just a little, when he set the egg beater down and looked over to check on the boy, who stood beside Syaoran with his arms crossed and a pout on his lips while Syaoran was explaining what a dishwasher did.

The boy was dressed far more simply in something like a peasant's shirt and woven leggings. They were clean, at least. He had very badly cut blond hair and when he looked up to see who I was as I came in, the eyes that met mine were not even remotely human. They were silver and they glowed and were sort of slitted. I was a little startled, and I turned back to the prince, but he was much better at wearing his human skin, it seemed. His eyes didn't seem weird at all.

"Hello," I said cautiously, and waited for Ashura to take over.

He quickly did. He still had a bit of kingliness left in him, and he knew how to treat with someone like this prince without being either intimidated or intimidating.

"Iorogi-sama, this is my elder son, Yuui. As I mentioned, he's just come of age and he's leaving for specialized education tomorrow, so I'm afraid he won't be here often, but I wanted you to meet him."

We bowed to each other with gravity. It was weird, but I ought not to get out of practice with formality. Someday, I'd be in Nihon where it would be required of me.

"I'm honored," I said simply. I couldn't tell what his title was or even if he had one, so best to not screw it up.

"And Yuui, this over here is Ginsei, who will be living with us. Ginsei?"

All I got was a sullen look, and then the opportunity to witness an argument between the nobleman and the child in a hissing, sinuous, graceful language that I could not begin to understand. And yet it wasn't that hard to figure out, because the man just got colder and the boy more sullen, and then he slumped down to sit on the floor and pout.

I looked at Ashura, who'd clearly been maintaining a spell to allow us all to speak with each other. He must have let it go so they could have their argument in peace, although I wondered if they'd even noticed we couldn't understand them, or cared.

"I have to get going," the man barked out.

Ashura bowed to him, a little. "You won't stay for some rest or refreshment?"

"No, I skipped out on a big meeting to do this, and I have to go soothe ruffled feathers." He glanced around at us slyly, and said, "Literally," with a smirk. "Ginsei. Behave yourself," he commanded the boy, before suddenly shattering his way out of existence in this world. It left behind a jagged crack in the countertop, unfortunately.

"Well, that wasn't the least bit graceful," Ashura said, giving the crack a grumpy scowl.

"Very dramatic, though," I giggled. I couldn't help it. And Ashura looked at me, and we were both thinking the same thing, and we couldn't stop biting our lips and finally laughing together. It was only that he _did_ sound awfully like Kurogane. Who knew that if you spliced my boyfriend with a badger, you got a devil prince?

And then Ginsei suddenly shoved Syaoran away from him, scrambling to his feet and trying to dash out of the room before any of us noticed the fat tears that had started streaking down his cheeks.

"I'll get him," I volunteered, feeling far more cheerful than I really should about all of this.

So much so that it only dampened my mood the tiniest little bit when I took Ginsei's shoulder to turn him around and try to soothe him, and Ginsei sank his teeth into my arm.


	4. and a very happy start

and a very happy start

I was true to my word, and called home at least once a week.

Ginsei gradually defrosted, although he refused to speak to me on the phone, and the girls were warming up to him the more that Syaoran brought him around. He wouldn't be ready to attend school for quite some time, considering he didn't know how to read until Ashura started teaching him, but they were determined to have him interact with the humans as much as possible.

He wouldn't let go of his silver cat-eyes, no matter what they said.

Tomoyo called me once a month, as reports came in. Still hunting demons. Still clearing rubble. Kurogane had a tendency to impress his men by shouldering the heaviest burdens himself, and charging headlong at the oni to protect them. Idiot.

As for myself, my new life was easy in some ways and incredibly difficult in others. I liked my classes and my fellow students seemed far more serious and less prone to bullying and gossip than the ones I had left behind. University itself was easy, if time-consuming.

It was just living on my own that was difficult. I wasn't used to a tiny apartment space. I was fumbling around with an electric kettle and instant noodles most of the time, hoping that eventually someone would tell me the secret to cooking for myself. I was always forgetting to do my laundry until it was nearly too late.

It was hard to sleep.

I took to studying my magics late into the night. When I finished my classwork, I could tell right away whether or not I'd be able to sleep that night. When the walls seemed to press inward and make me feel cut off from the whole world. When the voices down the hall or the cars passing by on the street outside only made me feel less connected to anything. I couldn't lie there all night feeling untethered. So those were the nights I'd shut my textbook and open my scrolls.

I had finally mastered dimension travel by the time it started snowing. I couldn't do it every day and I couldn't transport a whole group, the way I'd seen in Ashura's dreams of our future-that-never-was. The potential of this magic was too much to contain inside myself, and I was determined to get to the bottom of how it was contained in that little creature I would never get to meet. Someday. When I understood more.

I went home for a few days break and finally got Ginsei to warm up to me. I even thought he might start giving me a grudging three or four minutes on the phone when I called home. He and Syaoran were getting along better.

Kurogane finally got the Empress to call. The day after I'd already gone back. We never got the chance to talk.

I figured out the spell for translating speech before the last snow of the winter.

Maybe I'd already known, during those lonely nights when I reached for a spellbook instead of a pillow, what I was planning. I think I must have, no matter how many times I refused to think or tried to lie to myself. I started carving a staff from a plank I got at a hardware store, transmuting it as I went to give it some beauty. As an object of focus, it had to be relevant to me, not anonymous. Somehow the top was taking shape as a bird half in flight. I scratched a tiny dragon near the base of the staff one night.

Snowmelt was still dripping off the bare branches of the trees in my apartment's courtyard when I wrote the letter.

_Ashura,_

_You've meant more to me than I can say, but I think you know how I feel. I can't say I'm sorry for doing this, though. It's time. It was probably time back then, but it took me a while to sort it out. I've realized that continuing with school is foolish of me. University is supposed to help us prepare for our futures, but you and I both know my future was never meant to be here._

_The truth is, I miss him. I miss him so much._

_I hope you know how much I'll miss you, and Syaoran, too. Give him my love. Tell Ginsei I'm sorry I didn't get to know him better._

_Ashura, you're my father and always will be. Please be happy for me. I'll have the Empress call you as soon as I can._

_I love you._

I put it in the mail, and I put my clothes and textbooks into a box and left it right by my apartment door. The scrolls went back into the bag that Kurogane helped me make. And then it was time to go.

They don't tell you that runes can resist you, fight back, if they think you're not in control. You have to commit, once you've started. So I nearly chopped myself in half when my neighbor knocked on my door asking if I had some spare laundry soap and why half of my things were in the hall. I recovered and finished the spell, but it was hard work.

I landed on the dirt of the road of Nihon; on my ass, out of breath and sweating, with my staff skittering away from me. I'd picked the location from a map that I copied out of one of Kurogane's books. I didn't want to land right on top of anybody and I didn't have Ashura's assurance or pinpoint accuracy yet. So I had a ways to walk.

I pulled my map out to get my bearings. I was on the road, but one direction would take me into the heart of Suwa and one would start a long trek toward Shirasagi and the royal family. I knew I would need to present myself to them. It was just.

I needed to see him. Now. My skin had felt too tight for six months, at least. It ached. I needed him as soon as possible. I needed to make him laugh and see his eyes light up when he saw me coming, I needed to hear his temper snap for no reason, I needed to kiss him . . .

A mighty roar split the quiet air. I shoved the map away and hurried to retrieve my staff. My heart hammered in my chest. A demon. Somewhere very nearby.

It was better to approach it and kill it than to wait for it to sneak up on me. So I set off in the direction I thought I had heard it come from. I'd use the staff for location if I needed it, but for the moment I wanted to conserve my energy.

It roared again, and then choked off into a chilling sort of squeal of pain. There was a loud shout coming from a human throat.

That's when I broke into a run. With no combat experience in magic, with a staff I wasn't even finished carving, I ran to face down a demon that appeared to be killing a human. I ran full-tilt up a hill, my stomach swooping and my fingers half-numb with anticipation . . .

I crested the hill, and saw my boyfriend being swallowed by an oni nearly 4 metres tall.

My scream blasted the grass out around me thirty paces. The oni stopped trying to chew to stare at me in shock. And Kurogane, the idiot. He swept his sword around somehow and cut off the oni's head while stuck halfway down its throat. My wave of fire that roasted the carcass in less than a minute might have been unnecessary, but it felt good. My phoenix seemed to like fire. That was the best focus I'd had from my staff thus far.

Kurogane stared at me like he didn't know what I was. He was slick with black blood from the oni, all over his hair and clothes, and I almost didn't notice at first that his own red blood was pumping from horrific gashes down the side of his face.

"It's me," I gasped.

"I know. I'm trying to decide if I died and found you in the afterlife."

It was such a nonsensical thing to say that I almost for a moment believed this wasn't really Kurogane after all. But then I just scoffed at him to cover up my sudden attack of nerves.

"If you were in the afterlife, then why are you still covered in that crap? And you're _bleeding_," I said as I finally registered the torn skin on his face. I bit my lip. I couldn't heal it. "Where are your men? Do you have a priestess around yet? You ought to get that purified, for one thing."

"No, I sensed this one early this morning and set off on my own. We have a miko arriving next week, the men are all busy preparing a place for her to live."

Akane. I didn't want to think about her. Not yet. But what if they . . . What if nobody had wanted to tell me? Kurogane might not have had a choice. Her parents had surely been promised something.

He seemed to know what I was thinking. Like that was ever hard for the two of us. He wiped stinking black gunk onto his stinking gunky pants, and held up his hand.

The thread I'd tied around his finger was still there.

"Who needs a priestess if we've got a wizard though?"

He looked nervous, as nervous as I felt. But at that sight and those words, all my fears fled. I laughed, clapped a hand over my mouth in case it was a precursor to tears, and then found myself drawn tightly into his arms. My skin finally seemed to relax. I finally felt warm. I finally felt like I could lay down at night and fall asleep.

"Can I just . . . stay here?" I muttered blissfully.

"You'd better," he rumbled, and nudged at my face until I lifted it to kiss him. "Fuck, you have no idea how much I missed you. I can't believe you're here. Don't— don't do that to me again, okay?"

"Never."

And that is the story of how I wound up meeting Kurogane's retainers wearing battered old blue jeans and covered in bits of demon esophagus. It was a glamorous beginning.


End file.
